How Does Asia Mean？(Part II)

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How does Asia mean? (Part II)Sun Ge , Hui Shiu-Lun & Lau Kinchi

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, 2000

How does Asia mean? (Part II)

SUN Ge (Translated by HUI Shiu-Lun and LAU Kinchi)

The ®rst part of this essay covered `Two approaches: does Asia exist?’ and `Convergence of thetwo approaches’, which explore the Àsia’ question in the formation of Asianism and itsdifferent historical moments. (Editor’s note)

The positioning of Asian perspectives and the problems it reveals

Almost at the same time as Watsuji Tetsuro’s ethical study, there existed an unnoticedline of thinking that problematized Asia. As it is more theoretically inclined andlacking in the inherent tension of thinking, it therefore did not arouse as much interestas the discussions of the Asian question. However, the possibility for a new turnimplicit in this line of thinking is becoming more discernible half a century later.

This is the thinking on Asia of the historians associated with the Kyoto School of thought. The founder of this tradition of historiography was Naito Konan, and as I have

not done any systematic study on this school, I cannot offer an overall evaluation. Here,I offer only preliminary thoughts on two historians and their thinking on Asia.The ®rst is Suzuki Naritaka (1907±1988). He took part in the two symposia, `The

Standpoint of World History and Japan’ and Òvercoming the Modern’, in the early1940s. He specialized in western medieval history. His teacher, Karaki Junzo, waslabelled as ànti-modern’. As a scholar of the Kyoto School, it is symbolicallysigni®cant for Suzuki to have taken part in these symposia which, on the one hand,indirectly supported the propagation of fascist ideologies and, on the other, earnestlypursued theoretical discussion. To Suzuki and other Kyoto School scholars, theoreticalpursuits were a more important concern than pursuing thinking that confrontedreality and political responsibility. It is precisely this attitude of judging from aloftmatters of politics that caused them to be used by political forces.

Suzuki does not directly engage in the historical study of Asia. His concern is thepattern of `world history’. He thinks that one of the fundamental problems formodern history is `the becoming one of the world’. The becoming-one process is not brought about through à natural process of thousands of years of mutual relations between the various parts of the world that eventually give birth to an integratedworld. Rather, this occurs through a sudden and drastic process of incorporation intoone entity, with the history of long periods of isolation shared by various parts of the

world that had not been broken by exchanges among them interrupted as if overnight’ (Suzuki 1990: 14±15). Suzuki stresses that the world becomes one notthrough the sharing of common ideals and orders consistent with one another. It israther the consequence of Europe’s unilateral expansion, the Europeanization of non-European regions. Suzuki also points out, in a similar vein, that Èurope began to

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emerge in an all-pervading context from ancient times, and also took shape in anall-pervading context in medieval times. While, for Asia, tracing back to the dawn of the history of mankind, we ®nd several distinct cultures taking shape separately anddeveloping autogenously and independently of one another. These distinct originsthen developed into autonomous, self-contained cultures, churning out histories that

are closed to and autonomous from one another. Unlike to Europe, whether politicallyor culturally, Asia has never been a uni®ed whole. While the unifying nature of Europe is real, it is unreal for Asia to be ascribed a unifying nature. If Asia can beattributed a common Asian consciousness, this is only possible for the last hundredyears. And that is only made to emerge as a reaction to Western European imperial-ism.’ (Suzuki 1990: 33)

Suzuki’s way of thinking is representative of the dominant notion in the modernperiod and understanding of the world within intellectual circles. Such thinking notonly coincides with Toynbee’s `challenge and response’ model of historical expla-

nation, it also coincides with the track of thinking among modern Japanese intellectu-als on the question of the substantialization of Asia. Interestingly, such a way of thinking is that of intellectuals in the West in relation to the discussions on the processof the globalization of modernity, except that it is appropriated by Suzuki so tocounter Eurocentric ways of thinking. Undeniably, the mindset for posing questionsin this way possesses the paradoxical character peculiar to westernized intellectuals of the East. This enables Suzuki to identify more easily with the idea of `Japan’suniqueness’ on the theoretical level. It is certainly not coincidental that he andTakeyama Michio engaged in conversation many times.1

Certainly, the question of Asia cannot be tackled directly through people likeSuzuki, whose expertise lies rather in the ®eld of European history. Among scholarsof Japan studies, Miyazaki Ichisada (1901±1998) directly dealt with the study of Asiain its entirety, and echoed Suzuki’s world history perspective from the perspective of Asian Studies. Even though there is nothing in common between Miyazaki andSuzuki in terms of speci®c conclusions, the pivotal point of Miyazaki’s thinking andthat of Suzuki are in agreement. Both are motivated by a will to resist the hegemonyof Western Europe and endeavour to construct a new idea of world history.

In 1942, Miyazaki was instructed by the Ministry of Education to take part incompiling and writing The Outline of the History of the Greater East Asia. This was, of course, scholarship commissioned by the authorities and was meant to serveaggression. However, Miyazaki dealt with this thorny problem according to the KyotoSchool’s ways of understanding. `Of course, in terms of scholarship, such thingsshould not be written. But we can neither turn a blind eye to the Asian historyaccording to the vision of Europeans looking down from a commanding position inwhich Asia is represented as stagnant without progress and development.’ (Miyazaki1975: 2) It is with the will to challenge Eurocentrism that Miyazaki, together withothers, undertook to `rewrite’ the ideological objective of the Ministry of Education’sattempt to produce a reader for the people of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity

Sphere. They broadened the history of Asia by including West Asia, as well as EastAsia. The rewriting also transposes the provenance of civilization from East Asia toWest Asia, describing the process of the gradual movement towards the East of civilization, until it ®nally reaches Japan. In this portrait of the ¯owing of civilizationinto the East, Miyazaki showed a contradictory attitude towards the positioning of

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How does Asia mean? 321

Japan. Ideologically, he is inclined to echo the idea of regarding Japan as the centre, but he is so rigorously trained in his scholarship that he cannot allow himself to dothat. Consequently, he adopted an objectivistic attitude with regard to the historicalpositioning of Japan.

It is, however, not true that Miyazaki’s concept of Asia is directed against Japan’s

militarism. In fact, like most other scholars of the Kyoto School, Miyazaki does nothave a clear understanding of the current political situation. As a result, in a simplisticmanner, he identi®ed politically with the ideologies of militarism. But the politicalstand of Miyazaki does not occupy a signi®cant position in his scholarly activities.Beyond theoretical considerations, he does not show any interest in questions of thinking and ideologies.2 His theoretical concern is the problem of the constitution of world history. And the question of the unity of Asia can become an object for histhinking because, like Suzuki, he also wants to depict a picture of world historydifferent from that framed by Eurocentrism. Therefore, even though his thinking

assumes Japan to be representative of Asia in the struggle against Western Europe,which leads to the justi®cation of Japan’s aggression beginning from the Sino- Japanese War of 1894±1895, he does not simplistically take the ideologies of Japanesenationalism and militarism as his basic position. The view he establishes through hisstudy of Asia implicitly contains in it quite rich productive elements.

An Outline of the History of the Greater East-Asia had not been ®nished by the timeof Japan’s defeat, saving Miyazaki from leaving a taint on his record. But this did notsigni®cantly affect him. Even when the Ministry of Education gave the order, shortlyafter Japan’s defeat, to erase all traces of evidence of such a project, he managed to

publish the work in 1947 under a different title, An Outline of the History of Asia. The basic characteristic of Miyazaki’s study can be seen in this work, and it is particularlyremarkable that An Outline of the History of Asia contains signi®cant elements from thelegacy of Asianism while reworking them into a new direction.

As An Outline of the History of Asia takes the entire Asia as its object of study,theoretically it must deal with the fundamental fact that the region of Asia ischaracterized by cultural differences, a fact leading Umesawa Tadao to deny theexistence of Asia. While Suzuki invokes a unifying Asia to confront the challengesfrom Europe, Miyazaki does not put forward an integrated Asia as a countering force.He thinks that the history of Europe has been studied quite comprehensively, and has become part of world history. But the study of the history of Asia remains far behind,inadequate for assuming a position in world history. In view of this, Miyazaki wantsto move the study of Asia forward so that the history of Asia, seen by the West asstagnant, can become a part of world history. As for the cultural differences in Asia,Miyazaki believes that this cannot be cause enough to keep them isolated from oneanother, for `the ties of communication link them closely together.’ (Miyazaki 1987:20) But Miyazaki is also inclined, like Umesawa, to confront the regional differenceswithin Asia. Thus, in An Outline of the History of Asia, he differentiates between threemain civilizations in Asia: the Indian, the Chinese, and the Persian Islamic civiliza-

tions. All other Asian cultures are regarded as variations of the three main types. Onthe basis of this, Miyazaki directs his attention to the discussion of `communications’ between these civilizations from ancient times until today, focusing particularly onthe disintegration and mutation of civilization due to the inherent mobility of thecivilization in question.3

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322 Sun Ge

Miyazaki discusses, from a completely different direction than that of Umesawa,the interconnections between the different areas in Asia, without framing it within theopposition of Europe and Asia. On the contrary, Miyazaki translates his mode of analysis on the interconnections between different cultures within Asia to the relation between Europe and Asia. He thereby dissolves the simple model of the opposition

between Asia and Europe in analysing their relations. In attending to the interconnec-tion between Asia and Europe historically, he moves forward one step further thandid Suzuki. His conceptions of the history of Asia are described as `a history of communications’ and `a history of contacts’.

According to Miyazaki, historical studies must begin from `tangible facts’ that arewell known to people, but `the phenomena of facts are not all there is, for they areonly the results produced by the encounters between immense powers. The powerincludes not merely the whole of the people’s and the state’s intellectual and willpower, but also the potential of the economic resources of the land activated by this

power. In fact, the regions that exist in history are produced as the ®eld of the actionsof such power. The power that shapes a region is also the power that shapes an age.’(Miyazaki 1987: 224) This reminds one of the unresolved dif®culty in Watsuji’sthinking of the relation between local conditions and history, the fundamentalproposition concerning Umesawa in his ecological approach to history, and thestudies of regional histories in today’s Japan. And the way Miyazaki thinks aboutregions suggests that it is possible for the study of regional history and the study of intellectual history to converge.

Miyazaki has consistently opposed the kind of Asian studies that treat the distinct

cultures of different regions as an isolated object of study, and then compiles thenon-related isolated studies into a book. In his discussion of the `contest’ betweendifferent peoples and cultures, he tries to show the inherent organic connections thathistory allows us to see. To do that, Miyazaki follows the study of European historyand divides the history of Asia into ancient, medieval, and modern, and furtherextends this framework to the discussion of the continuation of the modern periodinto `the most recent modern period’. He then argues that the `Renaissance’ occurs inWest Asia, East Asia, and then Europe, denoting the respective beginnings of themodern age in each area. Such a process occurred around the ninth century in WestAsia, the eleventh century in East Asia, and between the fourteenth and ®fteenthcenturies in Europe. Miyazaki thinks that this process follows a temporal sequence,with the phases in the sequence mutually in¯uencing one another. The EuropeanRenaissance is the latest to occur and, with the greatest achievements, providesEurope with the foundation to engage in the most powerful projects of expansion inthe modern period.4 The most problematic point in Miyazaki’s narration of history ishis taking for granted the mode in which history is narrated in modern Europe. He believes that this can be regarded as a universal mode of narration, even though sucha representation of history is derived from the need to explain history in Europe.Thus, he thinks that one can employ such a mode of narration to deal with various

situations in different areas of Asia. Therefore, the explanations he offers of theRenaissance in different areas cannot but be a semblance of truth, and his account of the formation of nationalism as well as the modern state in modern China is strained.

However, what Miyazaki does should not be compared with the simplisticappropriation of western theoretical frameworks. He thinks hard on his methodology

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for studying history, one which aims towards the establishment of world history asan organic whole, and it is on the basis of the assumption of the inherent organicconnections of world history that be employs the western model. Thus, Miyazaki doesnot appropriate western theoretical frameworks of history statically.

He is concerned throughout with the dynamic relations linking Asia and Europe

as the content for demonstrating his theoretical model. For example, Miyazaki thinksthat the motive power of the Industrial Revolution in England comes from India. AsEngland had, very early on, laid the ground for wool production and processing, the beginning of the importation of raw cotton from India stimulated the development of the textile industry at home. However, as wool processing was originally performedas a cottage industry, the massive importation of cotton posed new demands on thismode of processing, leading to the standardization of production and the establish-ment of specialized factories. Ef®cient and low-cost machinery was then invented,with the steam engine representing the revolution in motive power, giving rise to the

Industrial Revolution. `Without the supply of raw materials and the markets for theexportation of products produced with them, the newly invented machines perhapswould have lain idle until they were destroyed by the reactionary forces of themedieval period, leaving behind for the later generations only a nostalgic topic forconversation. In fact, even the spirit of the Industrial Revolution itself was aroused asa response to the impact of the active trade with the East.’ (Miyazaki 1987: 350±51)Miyazaki deals with the relationship between the East and the French Revolution insimilar ways, stressing particularly the in¯uence of the Chinese and the JapaneseConfucian social forms on the Christian societies of Western Europe, which were in

opposition to Islam. He believes that the non-religious form of Confucianism helps break the binary thinking in the demarcation between the `us and them’ of religiousthought, thereby providing those arguing for the elimination of religion in Europewith powerful intellectual weapons (Miyazaki 1987: 354±55).

For Miyazaki, England’s Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution were the beginning of what he calls `the most modern era’, that is, what normally is called the beginning of modernity. When Miyazaki considers these two historical events byrelating them to Asia, the signi®cance of this gesture is not that his argument isconvincing, but rather that his idea, written 40 years ago, brings up a subject whichhas become the focus of a series of discussions for later generations. Above all, it evensubtly echoes the expositions of Wallerstein and Braudel on the globalization of capitalism.

There are, however, still other problems. Miyazaki and Suzuki, being from thesame generation, were confronted with the urgency of their times, which wasintimately connected to the nourishment sustaining their scholarship. The relation-ships between the Kyoto School and World War II require a separate paper, but I willsimply note that the objectivity of the Kyoto School was maintained through veryturbulent times. Many scholars personally took part in the war of aggression. Such acontrast between scholarship and the times in which it is conducted deserves study,

rather than being dealt with reductively. The problem of the elimination of subjec-tivity in Watsuji should also be discussed within such a context. I believe that withinthis particular historical context, some very interesting questions may be drawn froman examination of the so-called objectivity of scholarship.

The intellectual tradition created by the Kyoto School has left a complicated legacy

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324 Sun Ge

for intellectuals of later generations engaged with the question of Asianism. Betweenthe idealistic approach to, and the symbolization of, Asia in the question of Asia, onthe one hand, and the rejection of treating Asia purely on the level of ideas, on theother, is a different approach ± that of searching for an understanding of historicalstructure out of materiality. Even though Kyoto School scholars fail to sort out the

relation between thinking and scholarship and put scholarship in the service of ideologies, their writings suggest the possibility of understanding Asia differently.That is, they offer the possibility of bringing the idea of Asia and the material Asiatogether, allowing the two approaches to integrate through the perspective of a ¯uid`history of communications’.

Regrettably, although many works on the question of Asia have appeared sincethe 1980s, most are merely, as Miyazaki has already criticized, isolated studies of different areas of Asia then compiled into a book without bothering even to askwhether the chapters are in anyway related. These studies may have made some

contribution and furnished further details. However, they fail to reach the levelachieved by their predecessors with regard to an overall picture. Dynamics and asense of crisis are missing. So too are a boldness of vision and an aspiring spirit inscholarship.

It is only in the early 1990s that a new trend of discussion on the question of Asia,aroused by the publication of a seven-volume series, emerged among intellectuals in Japan. That series is Asian Perspectives5 published in 1993 and 1994 by the TokyoUniversity Press. The chief editor was Mizoguchi Yuzo, Emeritus Professor of theTokyo University, in collaboration with other professors of the Tokyo University,

Hamashita Takeshi, Miyajima Hiroshi and Hiraishi Naoaki.6

This series has gonefurther in its questioning than any discussions of the issue of Asia in postwar Japan.The contributors re¯ect on the `unfolding of the historicity of knowing as regards Asiain Japan’. They also approach the question of Asia in terms of the history of thequestioning, and re-examine both the meaning of the relations between Japan andAsia and the relationship between the question of Asia and the question of modernity.Although it is inevitable that the collection contains both good and bad work anddiverse themes, the series nevertheless has achieved once again the problematizationof `Asia’. However, the most remarkable thing about the series is the collaboration between Mizoguchi Yuzo and Hamashita Takeshi that symbolizes the joining of intellectual history and regional studies, the most important of its kind since the shortconversation between Takeuchi Yoshimi and Umesawa in the early 1960s.

Mizoguchi Yuzo specializes in Chinese intellectual history. The most distinctivecharacteristic of his studies is his approach to an object of study from within. That is,he is attentive to the texture of the object of study without assuming any presuppo-sition to be true. In his study of Chinese intellectual history, particularly of the periodwhen the Ming dynasty is collapsing and the Qing dynasty is emerging, he grasps thecomplex context speci®c to this critical historical transition, and follows close to theinternal tensions of that period in posing his questions. As an intellectual historian, he

displays an internal intensity much stronger than what we ®nd with other historians.The intensity manifests itself in the way Mizoguchi conducts his interrogation, whichalways unfolds along the line of `moments of tension’ in history.7 The primary motiveof Mizoguchi’s study of Chinese intellectual history is to search for principles that areunderstood by him in ways similar to that of Takeuchi Yoshimi. He is not concerned

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with the interpretation of anything outside the concrete historical process; the princi-ples he discusses reside in unrepeatable historical events.

Mizoguchi began his academic career by critically examining postwar intellectualhistorians, such as Takeuchi Yoshimi and Maruyama Masao. However, he carries onthe tradition of Japan’s modern intellectual history in his pursuit of principles. His

own studies only concern the question of Asia indirectly; Chinese intellectual historyis always his primary preoccupation. But as he proceeds with his study, he managesto dissolve all established premises and ideas in his ®eld, particularly the premisede®ning the so-called modern thinking produced by the `occidentalists’ in the East.This makes him very different from Miyazaki. Although Miyazaki also attends to theturbulences and transformations in Chinese history, his entrance into Chinese historyis always guided by the periodization of European history. In addition, althoughMiyazaki does uncover important questions in his study of Chinese history, he is bound to neglect whatever cannot ®t into that periodization. And the part Miyazaki

neglects is precisely those problems Mizoguchi is concerned with and prepared todeal with. What Mizoguchi has displayed is a historical picture very different fromthat derived from modern European narrative. What Mizoguchi manages to portrayin his remarkable analysis in historical case studies is beyond the reach of thepresumed Western mode of thinking, which is the engraved texture of China’smodernity. The tracing of the engraved texture in Mizoguchi’s historical studies leadsto the study of history over a long period, and this characteristic distinguishes hishistorical study from those of historians who only deal with periodized history. In thisrespect, the case studies of Mizoguchi are deeply imbued with a sense of history. On

the basis of scholarship over long periods of time, Mizoguchi tries to forward aconception of the principles of China’s modernity and, hence, to theorize it.Mizoguchi’s approach to the history of China from within reveals to us the limitationsof concepts from the modern West, making the series he edits something that mustnot be neglected.

Hamashita Takeshi’s specialty is modern and contemporary Chinese history,particularly economic history. He pursues the inherent structure of the object he setsout to study, and tries to construct it as a rule-governed structure. His concern forstructure prompts him to recon®gure the organic connections in the Asian region,which resulted in his famous study of the tribute system. Hamashita reveals throughan analysis of the tribute system in East Asia, with China as the centre, a veryimportant fact: for East Asia at the transformational period of modernization, therewas no nation-state in the western sense. The region’s history formed in and throughthe trans-border grid of the tribute system, and its inherent dynamics are also subjectto the excitation of the tribute system. Even in Japan’s conception of severance fromAsia and endeavours in modernizing itself, these events occurred in reaction to thehistorical constraint of tributary relationships; that is, as merely the means rather thanas the ends, to free Japan from the position of a tributary state. Hamashita’s regionalstudy is a direct response to the question of Asia. He discusses not only the relations

existing in the East Asian region, but also the limitation of the externally de®ned`modernity’ for East Asia in the comparison between Asia and Europe. But there is afundamental contradiction in his discussion of the question of Asia. For Hamashita,East Asia is con¯ated with Asia. Furthermore, he is not interested in the question of the relation between an abstract idea of Asia and the understanding of East Asia in

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terms of the existing network of the tribute system. As a result, he is forced to applythe network of the tribute system to discussions of the regional structures of otherAsian areas.

Both Mizuguchi and Hamashita are surprisingly in harmony in their interrogationof the limitations and even ineffectiveness of the employment of the modern concept

of the European nation-state in the understanding of the history of East Asia.Notwithstanding that, Mizuguchi broaches the questions within the framework of thecountry `China’, while Hamashita considers matters within the framework of a regionwith China as the centre. It is precisely in this respect that the series engages with theproblems provoked by the impact of the encounter between the internal dynamics of the non-European world and the European world from very different perspectives.

Regrettably, perhaps because of a paucity of likeminded historians, the series lacksan overall examination of the conceptions of Asia formed in Japan since the beginningof the modern period. Originally, volume ®ve was to be dedicated to discussions of

`modern Japan’s understanding of Asia’ by the four editors, but in the end only onechapter, by Hiraishi Naoaki, was published. Hiraishi’s chapter, `Modern Japan on`Asianismº, is the only article in the volume that seeks to sort out Asianism, but it isunable to provide the essential points for guiding relevant discussions. Furthermore,the article is restricted by the demarcations made within Japan’s intellectual history.Thus, it is unable to consider the rich contents covered in the series. In addition, thescholars who contributed to this volume also lack a sense of placing their studies inthe historiography on intellectual history and the social sciences since the Meijiperiod. Furthermore, it is the series’ obvious intention to break away from the practice

of restricting contributions only to scholars from one nation, as represented in thehabitual conceptions of `Japanese on Asia’. Consequently, one- ®fth of the writers arefrom other East Asian nations and the United States. Therefore, with regard to itsrelationship to the carrying forward of Japan’s intellectual tradition and the traditionof scholarship, the position of the series is not clear. Interestingly, however, thescholars of intellectual history as represented by Mizoguchi and the scholars of thesocial sciences, as represented by Hamashita, display their connections to the tradi-tions of scholarship and thinking of earlier generations in their ®elds of research. Thismakes it possible to explore the thread of Japan’s Asianism through their studies. Wecan discover that, as people today have already moved beyond the simplistic binaryframe of the opposition between East and West, and are confronted with thecomplicated problem of globalization, the Japanese today are still primarily engrossedin the question of Japan’s self-identi®cation. If, while reading this series, we removethe contexts of an entire century of thinking on Asianism in Japan from ourconsideration, we will be unable to ®nd entry deep into this Asianism.

After skimming the history of thinking on Asianism, beginning with FukuzawaYukichi, we may now understand a hidden contradiction in the modern Japaneseperson’s Asian complex. Since ancient times, Japan and China were in an unequalrelationship. With that background, Japan, upon entering the modern era, attempted

to take the place of China and become the main agent confronting the West throughthe `Hua-Yi metamorphosis’. Thus, the contradiction is developed by at least threeconstituents: Japan, China and the West. Whether the West is an abstract fabricationis not a key question here. What is crucial is how Japan locates its position in thedynamics of such a con®guration. One can say, unlike as for China, the problem of

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self-identi®cation for modern Japan can only be solved through the medium of Asia.The complexity of the problem is because Japan’s re¯ection on Asianism is all butunable to free itself from the determination of such a non-academic factor of actuality.Thus, it constitutes almost all along a theme for right-wing intellectuals, forcingTakeuchi to adopt the `cat’s paw’ method as he tries to uncover re¯ections on

Japanese intellectuals’ responsibility to Asia and on the modernity of Asia. And it isprecisely along such a thread that the various transpositions in Asianism can occur inhistory. How can the series Asian Perspectives differentiate itself from this historicalthread that recalls such unhappy memories?

No matter how the editors of Asian Perspectives de®ned their tasks, it is notpossible for them to initiate totally new discussions. In fact, the intellectual traditionthat they cannot but confront poses many very different problems to them. How tosettle the problem of the symbolization of Asia raised by the elliptic trajectory de®ned by Fukuzawa and Okakura Tenshin? How to tackle the visualization by Watsuji of

replacing the conception of Asia versus Europe with the conception of three distinctmodes of local conditions and customs? How to deal with the efforts of Miyazaki inthe reconstruction of world history through the reconstruction of the relationship between Asia and Europe via the history of communications? How to take up there¯ection of Umesawa with regard to the deconstruction of the conceptual frameworkof Asia and the substantialization of the Asian region through the breaking of itssymbolization? How to confront the `ideology of Japanism’ from Watsuji to the KyotoSchool? And how to treat the goal of Japan’s cultural identi®cation that Takeuchiseeks to achieve through the examination of Asianism?

It is true that Asian Perspectives expands the horizon of re¯ection beyond Japan tocover the entire Asia, but what the scholars face is ®rst and foremost the problem of Japan. And today, after the relationship between Japan and Asia is being objecti®edand turned into an object of academic study, it is not for scholars of intellectualhistory such as Mizoguchi Yuzo, who are adept at dealing with the internal entangle-ments in history, to respond to such a situation. It is for ®ne scholars of economichistory such as Hamashita Takeshi, Kawakatsu Heita and Miyajima Hiroshi torespond. This, to a certain extent, displaces the direction of the questioning from theelliptic trajectory delineated by Takeuchi with regard to the question of Asia, makingit closer to the ®eld of Umesawa and even Miyazaki. At the same time, it also weakensthe ideological problem that Asianism faces historically, but it also, in turn, clouds itsown positioning.

Hamashita (1986) participated in the conference `Civilization Studies,’ which washosted by Umesawa. His article `Tribute and migrants’ was included in the collectionCivilization Studies on Ruling Institutions. Of course, this cannot be proof thatHamashita identi®es with Umesawa, for he holds a basic understanding of Asiaopposite to Umesawa. He not only acknowledges the necessity of the independentexistence of the Asian region, he further stresses the relativization of the concept of nation-state through geopolitics. Compared to Umesawa’s denial of the existence of

Asia and his adoption of the state as the basic unit in the discussion of the questionof civilization, Hamashita’s approach is very different. Yet, on a deeper level,Hamashita can be considered as representative of those scholars in Japan who studyan area in the broad sense of a sphere, as in Umesawa’s ecological approach tohistory, providing it another chance to be reactivated.

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Umesawa noticed very early the question of differentiating in the Asian region between large states of civilization and small states on the fringes of the large states.Watsuji only touched upon this question lightly. As a result, he failed to draw theattention of scholars of intellectual history. Umesawa, too, is not able to develop thenotion of the difference between a central civilized state and the small states around

its fringes into `relations studies’. Miyazaki tries to discuss the question of traderelations in the Asian region, but he cannot deal with the historical material for sucha study and remains merely at the stage of envisioning. Moreover, Miyazaki cannotfree himself from the discursive framework of a nation-state, and does not reach eventhe extent of Umesawa’s argument for differentiating between large states and smallstates. However, for scholars such as Hamashita, in their studies, the question of therelations between a civilized large state and the small states bordering it constitutesthe main line of research. Furthermore, unlike Umesawa and Miyazaki, they do nottake the state as a unit of research, but go beyond the boundaries of states and turn

their attention to the study of the relations between trans-border social structures andthe world. They also, through their practice, provide the foundation for communi-cation between economic history and intellectual history, thereby turning Uemesao’s`annihilation of history’ into the task of rewriting history. Thus, we ®nd inHameshita’s works, the attempt at reinterpretations of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and `disassociating Asia and integrating into Europe’.8 This is theproblem that Umesawa tries to evade and that Miyazaki simpli®es and rationalizes.Hamashita neglects the strong inertia of the logic of intellectual history and does not bring his own research and the fruits of the study of corresponding intellectual history

together. For this reason, his interpretation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperitysphere and of `Disassociating Asia’ has not resulted in anything positive except inideological misreading. But this is not a reason to reject Hamashita’s scholarship;rather, it reveals the predicament of regional studies without intellectual history.More important than this predicament is the opening that Hamashita’s works are ableto create. The nation-state framework is radically questioned in his studies, and thisleads to a reinterpretation of modern Asia (East Asia to be more exact), therebycreating a possibility for communications between intellectuals of East and West andalso an effective frame of reference for scholars of intellectual history. In thisconnection, Hamashita, Kawakatsu and Miyajima complement one another.Kawakatsu’s (1994) `The establishment and development of the East Asian economicsphere’ and Miyajima’s (1994) `The formation of small peasant society’ discuss thequestion of the East Asian regional system from a perspective `outside China’.Kawakatsu’s paper particularly deserves our attention. This is not because he has brie¯y sorted out the economic history viewpoint of the historians of the Kyoto Schoolrepresented by Kuwabara Jitsuzo, or because he has worked on and added toUmesawa’s ecological approach to history. It is because he has attempted to putforward his own view of `the system of countries that are closed to the outside’ withinthis intellectual tradition, and has further developed some key questions in the

discourses on Asia in Japan.Kawakatsu’s study of economic history and Miyazaki’s of Asian history have very

similar perspectives in that both focus on the trade relationships among the differentcountries of East Asia rather than on factors of ideology, and the mutual impacts andcontacts that come with these relationships. They also focus on the interaction as a

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result of trade relationships between Asia and Europe in the midst of the moderniza-tion process. Interestingly, although Kawakatsu does not cite Miyazaki, he too paysattention to the relationship between the Industrial Revolution in England and thecotton from India, and arrives at a conclusion completely consistent with Miyazaki onthe basis of a richer data analysis than what Miyazaki could have had:

Before the Industrial Revolution, England needed a century for the reproduction of products produced in India. Only with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution could areproduction even better than the original product be successfully produced. It isgenerally believed that England’s Industrial Revolution was not caused by anythingoutside England. But rather, it was the strong external pressure exerted on England bythe region with the original product that made the Industrial Revolution inevitable.The Industrial Revolution is by de®nition accompanied by a radical revolution of theeconomy and society. If generally it is said that the impact of the West is theinternational conditions of Japan’s industrial revolution, the international conditions of

the Industrial Revolution of England must then be the impact from the East, or ratherAsia.(Kawakatsu 1996: 61)

However, Kawakatsu discusses the Asian background of England’s IndustrialRevolution in a completely different context from that of Miyazaki. And that contextwas Kawakatsu’s effective questioning of the use of schemas from the historiographyof Western Europe in the study of the economic history of Asia. The questioning of the Industrial Revolution in England as autogenous is directed against the postwar Japanese historian Otsuka Hisao, who argued that England’s Industrial Revolution

was autogenous. Kawakatsu not only calls into question such a conclusion, he alsoquestions the comparative method Otsuka employs in his historical studies by takingthe mode of the modernity of Western Europe as the criterion for the judging and thecomparing of Japan’s modernity. Undeniably, this is also the schema employed even by Japanese historians such as Miyazaki who were blessed with insight from theirstudy of Chinese history and attempted to go beyond Eurocentrism. Therefore, inview of such a situation, Kawakatsu appeals for `the search for a perspective for Asia’.On a deeper level, then, Kawakatsu’s Asian studies have revealed the vulnerability of historians of China, such as Miyazaki, who initiated `the communications history’approach, bringing the existing studies of relations between Asia and Western Europeto an even more complicated dimension. And it is in this dimension that Kawakatsuproposes his view of the system of `closing Japan to the outside world’.

This is his response to the `world system’ of Wallerstein.9 However, if we pursueKawakatsu’s thinking further, we are led necessarily to another problem. Runningthrough the trajectories of thinking from the discourse of a world system of self-isolated states to the discourse on the perspective of wartime history is the subtext of a shifting of the focus of the narrative of the East Asian history from the mainlandcountries. This implies the dissipation of the question raised by Hamashita’s concep-tion of the tribute system with regard to the structural relations between large and

small. Even more important, however, than the difference between Kawakatsu andHamashita, is that Kawakatsu is now confronted with the same problem as that whichconfronted Umesawa. Their theories are unable to dissolve the ideological posing of the idea of `Disassociating Asia’. Similar to Umesawa’s eventual move towardssurrendering himself to the ideological formulation of `Disassociating Asia’,

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Kawakatsu faces the same trap. When he puts forward the idea of the loose union of `Nichidoneraria,’10 he neglects the very important problem that the turning of the focus of the Asian perspective from the mainland to the sea does not make thecenturies of relations between Japan and the mainland disappear. If Kawakatsu wereunable to face squarely the history of Japan’s relation to East Asia, then it would be

the fate of his theory of the marine states to be ideologized. Umesawa’s theory wasused for the support of the claim of Japan’s superiority during his time, and it ispossible now for Kawakatsu’s theory to be appropriated for the justi®cation of theliberal historical view, while he remains a marginal ®gure among the liberal group.

Umesawa had at least gestured toward entering into a dialogue with Takeuchi.But the desire for such an engagement is missing in Kawakatsu’s study. I wouldsuggest to set up, other than an engagement in dialogue, a frame of reference forstudies like that of Kawakatsu, by putting their seemingly unrelated studies togetherand reconstructing their relations of correspondence, and thereby grasping more

accurately the complexity of the discourse of Asia. That both Kawakatsu and Ume-sawa discussed the question of Japan as a marine state in the same conferencesuggests signi®cantly that their neglect of tension in the intellectual history lead bothscholars to follow the same direction in their scholarship.

Perhaps this is the positioning of Chinese intellectual history as represented byMizoguchi in the series. The editors of the series do not seem to have reachedconsensus on the point where intellectual history and economic history cross. ButMizoguchi’s (1994a) `The founding of the theory of the principle and Qi in China’,Kojima’s (1993) `The intellectual history proceeding from regional consideration’, and

Terada’s (1994) `The nature of `agreement’ in the legal order of the Ming and QingDynasties’ form a distinct point of contrast. Through them it is revealed that, for acentury, the thinking of the Japanese on `Asianism’ was at its weakest on the questionof `China in Asia’.

Beginning from the time of Fukuzawa and Okakura until the time of Umesawaand Miyazaki, China has always been an extremely dif®cult subject for discursiverepresentation. Just as Hamashita, Kawakatsu and others have shown, the dif®cultylies in the fact that the process of modernization and severing from Asia for Japan wasforged out of its struggle for autonomy from the domination of China. As thecharacteristics of Japan as a modern nation-state took shape, and as Japan perpetratedaggression against China time and again since it entered the modern age, theself-identi®cation of Japan throughout intensi®ed around its relation of tension toChina. Takeuchi comes closest to facing this vulnerability of Japan. He stresses in theintellectual history written throughout his life the signi®cance for Japanese of under-standing China. But even he could only transform China into a symbol forthe modernity of East Asia for Japan, and he does not really manage to get near tothe complexity of China itself. The academic intellectuals of the Kyoto School, led byChinese historians, started establishing China studies at the beginning of this century, but due to the obvious limitation of their thinking their academic work is con®ned to

an extremely narrow range. Moreover, their oversimpli®ed reaction to questions of ideologies also hampers their ability to tackle intellectual questions. One can say inthe intellectual tradition that Asian Perspectives confronts, there is always a thorny of question deferred. How can Japanese intellectuals be made actually to face China, sothat China not only becomes the object of academic discourse, but also the resource

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for modern thinking? The Japanese intellectuals who had undergone again themovement for `Disassociating Asia and integrating into Europe’ were still unable tomake the question of China part of their cultural and intellectual resources when theytackled the series of questions of Asianism ®rst raised by Fukuzawa.

Undeniably, the outstanding contributions to Asian Perspectives of the scholars of

economic history make them the `selected representative’ of the series. However, theirsuccess is partly due to ®nding a point of contact with international concern,particularly the countering relation to Wallerstein’s `world system’. And their pio-neering work in researching the economic history of East Asia also provides newperspectives and resources for discussions of the globalization of capitalism. Yet, theyare, at the same time, very limited in their achievement of writing the history of China. For in their academic concern, the ®eld of vision is determined bythe discourse of globalization among Western scholars, and the complexity of themodernity of China is only signi®cant to the extent that the responses to the Western

scholars allow. As the nation-state framework is being taken apart by working in the®eld of regional studies, the necessity for the in-depth study of the particularities of the history of China is thus pushed out of sight. By contrast, pursuers of Chineseintellectual history, and even pursuers of Japanese intellectual history, are confrontedwith a more serious dif®culty. As they attempt to probe deep into the inherentcomplexity of intellectual history, they cannot but discover that very limited method-ological resources are available in academic and intellectual arenas. Furthermore, thearea in which they can maintain a dialogue with the world is also far smaller than thatenjoyed by scholars of economic history. To a certain extent, one can say that scholars

of intellectual history are pursuing the production of discourses with regard to`regional concerns’, while scholars of economic history are globalized through theirregional discourses. Yet it is precisely the scholars of intellectual history who haveproblematized `China’, a term ambiguously de®ned in the context of modern Japanand remains unclear even in the context of the contemporary world. As Mizoguchipoints out in his Preface to the fourth volume in the series: `The opposition betweenthe Asian world and the European world is a product of the Asian process in becoming a modern state. This arti®cially produced divide in turn jeopardizes thenatural course of the Asian world’ (Mizoguchi 1994b: 7). It is obviously Mizoguchi’sstudy in Chinese intellectual history that leads him to such an observation, which isclearly explained in his `China as method’. Just as his paper in the series shows, heis actually probing not only for the so-called internal `matrix’ of Chinese historythrough his study of Chinese history, but also for a system of thinking radicallydifferent from the mode of thinking in Western historiography (particularly itsmodern form). This enables the probing of Mizoguchi and similar scholars such asKojima and Terada to point towards a direction different from that of Miyazaki andother scholars of China studies of the Kyoto School. This suggests that, in the ®eld of Chinese intellectual history, a similar challenge to the study of economic history was being raised. But as the object of its study, China is not admitted into prevailing

discourses of Japan’s intellectual circles, and the challenge stresses that one must tryto uncover the principles from within China itself. China studies becomes inevitablya marginal concern in the discourse of Asia.

It is a pity that Asian Perspectives cannot go further in turning `Asia’ into a symbolfor cooperation between scholars of intellectual history and economic history, as well

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as regional studies. The main reason for such a failure is that the series is ineluctablyconfronted with the history of Japan’s Asianism, which has already lasted foralmost a century and the history of the duet in `Disassociating Asia’ and `RevivingAsia’. Yet it is unable to bring itself to look squarely at the question. In otherwords, in this series we cannot ®nd a point where the two thinkings represented by

Takeuchi and Umesawa of the earlier generation come into contact with one another.The study of regional history, wittingly and unwittingly, weakens the historicalcontext of the question of Asia in Japan. As a consequence, it is forced to facequestioning again as to whether the schema of the centre and periphery would notlead to another attempt to justify the idea of the Greater East Asia Co-ProsperitySphere. Or, whether it would lead to an oversimpli®ed notion of `breaking ties withEurope and integrating with Asia’ in contrast to `disassociating Asia and integratingwith Europe’.

If we brie¯y examine the question of Asia running in Japan for nearly a century,

a very interesting phenomenon can be observed. The conception of Asia in Fukuzawaand Okakura contained undeveloped possibilities for a different turn, but the situ-ation of the war destroyed all possibilities of productive re-appropriation of theirthinking. With Watsuji’s theory of local conditions and customs, the re¯ection on Asia begins to suggest ways in which genuine development in thinking can be realized:clear the question of Asia of its idealistic character and turn it into the learning of theactualities. From Watsuji’s local conditions, through Umesawa’s ecological approachto history, to Hamashita’s regional studies and Kawakatsu’s system of closed coun-tries, the disciplines involved are very different, and the discourses on Asia coming

from them are also very different. Yet the underlying thread of `departing from theidealistic treatment of the question of Asia’ runs consistently through them. The twothreads of thinking on Asianism for almost a century in modern Japan came intocontact in the 1960s. And today in the series, they are brought together for the secondtime, yet no matter whether it is the ®rst or the second time, no real convergenceof the two threads can be observed. It is this keeping of distance from the idealismof the Asian question that makes the discussion of the question of Asia today evade,to some extent, the history of Asianism and evade the inherent tension of the questionof Asia faced by earlier generations. This, in turn, deprives it of the capacity forresponding forcefully to the various questions emerging from the background of there¯ection on Asia by intellectuals in today’s Japan.

Hamashita discusses three questions in the prefaces to the ®rst three volumes of Asian Perspectives. One question regards the multifaceted nature of the questionof Asia. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines in different sketches of the spatial Asia, Hamashita treats concepts through a wide range of ®elds. He tries toquestion the limitation of employing concepts according to the prevailing methodolo-gies of the social sciences, which synthesize and generalize concepts in order tograsp the ever splitting and mutating of the social space and the semantic space. Heshows the question of Asia to be comprised of multifarious angles and to be

approached by many available cognitive methods. Second, on the basis of havingshown the multifaceted nature of the question of Asia, he seeks to sketch the `regionalsystem’ of the Asian region as an integral whole. Hamashita’s representative studyof the tribute system and similar studies in economic history and internationalrelations pursue just this objective. In these studies, Asia is depicted as an organic

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whole with inherent machineries. In this whole, Chinese civilization is the centreof a tributary network, with East Asia, South East Asia, South Asia and WestAsia maintaining relations to it either in the form of paying tribute or in the formof trading. The tribute system constitutes an ordered region with an inherent logiccompletely different from modern Europe. That is, in contrast to the `state’ as

a unit, there is the regional mechanism of `the centre to its periphery’ and thecorresponding relationships of paying tributes and conferring titles. And third isa re¯ection on Asia from the perspective of the periphery. As the periphery is ¯uidand complex, it effectively reveals the actual conditions of communications andnegotiations among the internal differentiating factors of the Asian region. Theperiphery alters the prevailing situation in the study of history that takes as its objectof study the centre of things under consideration. It breaks the usual approach of relating one centre to another centre in studying, and replaces it with the centreversus periphery perspective that enables the internally complex relations to be

revealed. This not only points out for us the `centre to centre’ blind spot in the Eastversus West shaping of questions and reveals the peculiarity of the internal ¯uidityof the Asian region, it is also greatly illuminating in establishing new perspectives inresearch.

It is obvious that the three questions raised by Hamashita cannot be underesti-mated in their inspiring power to affect the study of intellectual history and history.Mizoguchi has also drawn on this thinking of Hamashita, showing that it is possiblefor intellectual history and regional history to come together in research. Hamashita’sapproach to Asia certainly requires the support of a great amount of concrete

research, and the papers collected in the series serve witness to just this function.However most of these papers are in the ®eld of social sciences, such as economichistory and intellectual relations history, and papers in the ®eld of intellectual historythat echo Hamashita are few. Hence, the aspiration to outline the problem of modernity in Asia with regional history becomes easily questioned. Hamashita is,after all, only an expert in the study of the relations of tribute and trade in East Asiaand Southeast Asia. Can the mode of study derived from examining this region beextended in a simple and direct fashion to cover the whole of the Asian region? AsMiyazaki has considered working out the organic connections of `the communicationshistory’ between Asia and Europe, how could the tribute system of Asia proposed byHamashita deal with such a legacy?

In his article `Tribute and treaties’, Hamashita (1997) discusses the relationship between tribute and treaties. But this is only a question of the internal structure of modern East Asia, and does not involve trading as conducted in Europe. It is true thatthe internal ¯uidity of East Asia is being established, but in such a model, the ¯uidrelationships and the tension of opposition between East Asia and Western Europe, between Asia and Europe, can hardly be revealed. I am certainly not makingexcessive demands of Hamashita’s study of economic history, asking him to bringeverything together and offer a comprehensive picture. But is it possible that the

perspective geared to the study of economic matters in regional studies may haveremoved the question of con¯ictual relations, such as intellectual history seeks toconfront? Has this then resulted in the erasure of the tension of con¯icts in politicalthought and cultures in history, just as Miyazaki did? Might this lead further to justifying all forms of violence in history? If the vision of Hamashita’s writing can

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consider more fully the fruits of intellectual history, and if scholars of intellectualhistory can work more closely with Hamashita, then it may be possible for the taskof reconstructing Miyazaki’s `history of communications’ to be taken further. If thefailure between Takeuchi and Umesawa to cooperate could turn into a new startingpoint, then upon what kinds of questions would Asian Perspectives re¯ect?

Kishimoto Mio wrote an excellent review of Asian Perspectives. She notices thisinternal problem of the series, but she represents it from a totally different angle:

Within the same Àsian Perspectives’ there exists two orientations with regard to twodifferent attitudes towards `the inherent culture of a region’ which still have notconverged with one another. One is concerned with the lasting, inherent cultural forms,and tries to think within that culture the orientation of one’s questioning. The otherquestions the concept of inherent culture itself, and is concerned with the tendencies of the encounters between trends that are moving and changing all the time. For re-searchers of Asia, no matter who the person is, he or she cannot but face this double

character contained in the concept of a region, and the attraction and danger of eachside of this dual nature.

(Kishimoto 1995: 40)

Let us consider Kishimoto’s question from a different angle. The difference thatrefuses to be resolved does not lie in whether the culture of a region is inherent ormobile, but rather in its being a succession of the tradition in which the question of Asianism has been discussed for almost 100 years. In concrete terms, there are twotraditions within the discussion of Asianism. One is represented by scholars of

intellectual history, with the question of Asia taken to be concerning Asia as an ideaof opposition to Western Europe. This tradition appears in different forms in differentperiods, nonetheless it is always there with regard to the ìdealistic nature’ of thistradition. (Ìdea’ here does not denote a concept, but the mental activity in contrast tothe economic and social activities.) The study of intellectual history today must atleast also take as one’s object of study the ideal content of the question of Asia, andmore or less face the inherent tension in history, even if one does not, as Takeuchi did,`put oneself into’ the question under consideration. The tradition was initiated byWatsuji and carried forward by scholars of social sciences. This tradition, to a largeextent excludes the in¯uence of the humanistic spirit and stresses that the question of Asia should only be concerned with the actual. And the ecological approach to historyrepresented by Umesawa typically re¯ects the `de-idealizing’ and the `de-ideologiz-ing’ nature of the approach to the question of Asia by this tradition. Even Miyazaki, being the historian most deeply imbued with the humanistic spirit, has to anextremely large extent eliminated the inherent tension in history in accordance withthe `scienti®city’ peculiar to the Kyoto School.

Hamashita and others carry on this de-idealizing tradition from the perspective of economic history. His unsuccessful exposition of the Greater East Asia Co-ProsperitySphere and `Disassociating Asia’ re¯ects his efforts in the pursuit of `de-idealization’.

It may be said that intellectual history deals with subjective ideas and activities of themind; it is appropriate for revealing the intensity of history. On the other hand,economic history and regional studies deal with abstract laws, and often dissolve thetension of the intricacy of the historical moments, excluding it from consideration. Asian Perspectives has carried in it the basic strands of the tradition of Asianism,

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lasting for almost a century. But the awareness for sorting out the strands is not there.Yet, this century is, more than any other period in history, equipped to bring the twotraditions of thinking on Asianism together, which, however, it fails to achieve. It isprecisely with respect to that, that we cannot but say that a necessary step is missingfrom Asian Perspectives. Before `setting off from Asia’, `re¯ection on Asia’ must be

done. In other words, the series, the most representative collection on the question of Asia in the 1990s in Japan, fails to take up `Asia’ and fully interrogate and sort out thisname with regard to its complicated history and tendencies that this name connotesat a given time. The problem is this: as early as Fukuzawa’s time, the questioning hadalready begun and reached its high point at the time of Takeuchi and Umesawa, butit has not been completed. While the questioning continues to take place alongsidedebates with regard to breaking away from Asia on the one hand, and embracing Asiaagain on the other, the questioning is now turning into a latent thread, framing thethinking of today. It would be wrong to avoid facing this and take regional studies

in an oversimpli®ed manner as a completely new study.In order to locate its position, Asia must be considered not only in contrast to

Umesawa’s ecological approach to history and civilization and the studies of economic history of the Kyoto School. It must also be considered against anotherthread of thinking on Asia ± Asianism in which Asia is idealized. It is in thisconnection that the criticism of Ueda Makoto quoted by Kishimoto seems to betoo rash. Like `Disassociating from Asia and integrating into Europe’, the gesture of `breaking away from Europe to embrace Asia’ expressed in the expression `Asia asthe starting point of thinking’ has became obsolete. For scholars of Japan today, it

is in fact necessary to sort out both `breaking away from Europe to embrace Asia’and `disassociating Asia and integrating into Europe’ with regard to theoretical aswell as actual concerns. Furthermore, in a sense, if thinking on the margin is topossess originality, it is necessary for it to probe for the points where one is tied totradition.

In the epilogue to Asian Perspectives, a crucial question is touched upon:

It can be said that this series is an attempt to look for the paradigms of Asian historyfor the discussion of the changes occurring in modern Asia. To consider this from a

different angle, it can also be said that the series can locate itself in a different order of discussion, that is, new discourses of Japan and Japanese are explored in and throughthe changes that the modern world has undergone. In other words, this is a link in theexploration for the characteristics of Japan. The characteristics being explored shouldnot be understood as a cultural identi®cation pursued since the Meiji period that tookthe West as its model. It should neither be understood as the emphasis on Japan in itself.It means that the series lays out what is involved in the commitment to think through Japan’s cultural identi®cation in Asia through the contextualization of Japan in Asia.This is a task that requires attention in the pursuit of continuity over the long period of history. We have recognized that the starting point of our discussions are peculiarities

in the nature of being a region, a region in the unfolding of processes of assimilationand dissimilation that take place within and between the homogeneity and the hetero-geneity that co-determine a region. In this process, it is necessary, on the one hand, toset out on the study of regional history in order to restore an idealized `west’ to theWest as a region for Japan’s `return to Asia.’ That return would require the efforts of several generations if it is to be completed. It is also necessary to take the Asian region,

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336 Sun Ge

which has always been particularized and regionalized, as partaking of an idea in ourdiscussions on the other hand.

( Asian Perspectives, Vol. 7 1993: 289±90).

As the quote from Edward Said at the beginning of this paper suggests, Asia in

fact exists throughout in the form of an idea for western intellectuals, even though itis an idea serving the needs of Eurocentrism. Similarly, for intellectuals of the East, theWest also becomes like a symbol, an idealized `principle’. When Asian Perspectivesdirectly lays out its intention to achieve a deconstruction of the idea of the West andto lift Asia as a principle into the context of world history, it does not show a simpledesire for `breaking away from Europe to embrace Asia’. On the contrary, what it hasin fact shown is the prospect of a possibility that can only be realized throughcooperation between intellectuals of the East and intellectuals of the West. It should be said that the ideality of Asia as a region is the most valid precondition for the

establishment of Asia as a category. In the narratives of the Asian intellectuals, theWest ± an idealistic category with almost no signi®cance to intellectuals of the West± is there already. Historically speaking, this idealistic category functions as themedium that pushes Asians into forming self-recognition.

However, just as an idealistic West cannot become a universal principle, neithercan an idealistic `Asia’ historically constituted by the Japanese gain admission to theworld of principle. Asian Perspectives has discussed in a reserved manner the possibil-ity of taking the idea of Asia as a world history principle with universal validity, butthe series does not make a distinction between such an idea and the idea of Asia

formulated by people from Fukuzawa to Takeuchi. In fact, the `idea’ pursued in theseries goes far beyond the level of `mood’ or `symbol’ reached by Fukuzawa andTakeuchi, and possesses a depth that the Kyoto School could not have hoped toachieve. The pursuit in the series of an idea of Asia is predicated upon two differentorientations, that of the study of regional history and that of intellectual history, intheir attempts to arrive at the formulation of a principle. Undeniably, in the narrationof globalization carried out from the perspectives of the West today, the idealisticnature narrating Asia is being concealed, and its position in world history is not clear.Furthermore, it is far from having enough weight to become pressing for theself-recognition by the intellectuals of Europe and America. On the contrary, whetherit is in the East or in the West, Asia, the idea, is still basically only a cause forcon®rming or criticizing the West as universal principle. At the same time, theOrientalism criticized by Said has produced a different idea of Asia, which has subtlyin¯uenced Asian intellectuals. This makes us easily feel contented with Takeuchi’sre¯ection on Asia. Discussions on Asia are often neglected because the limitations of Western ideas are not experienced by us with such an urgency, or we are oftencomplacent about the employment of the simple binary opposition between East andWest to explain the complexity of history. In doing this, we cannot, in fact, notice theregional historical tension inherent in Asia contained in the idea of Asia. If the above

understanding quoted from the Afterword of Asian Perspectives could be realized, if the intellectuals of Asia could make the idealized West regionalized, and the region-alized Asia idealized, what kind of changes could come about for scholarship in theworld?

However, the understanding from the series has not really been put into practice.

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The main reason for this could be that the regional studies of scholars of economichistory and the study of ideas by scholars of intellectual history have not converged.Although both have felt strongly the limitations of the ideas of the West, it takestrans-disciplinary cooperation to establish the ideas of Asia. Neither economic historynor intellectual history alone can accomplish such a task. Moreover, the context of

Japan’s Asianism contains such rich resources and profound lessons that the failureto sort them out creates the largest obstacle to the formation of the ideas of Asia incontradistinction to that of Orientalism.

What does Asia imply? As a member of Asia, it is not merely due to the need torespond to the voices of the post-colonial intellectuals in the West that we re¯ect onAsia. On the contrary, whether Asia should be taken as a perspective of instrumentalvalue, and on which level the question of Asia should be broached, is of concern toour own history. On the basis of this, we would ask: is Asia merely a question for the Japanese or other neighbouring East Asian countries? To the Chinese who, for a

century, have not established any relation of partnership with the Japanese, what doesAsia mean?

Notes

1. According to the bibliography of Suzuki’s works in Modernity in World History, Suzuki andTakeyana Michio attended together 22 small symposia. Takeyama is one of the few regularparticipants at symposia in which Suzuki also took part. Takeyama is not a historian of theWest. Therefore, he cannot really be regarded as a partner to Suzuki. Thus, the frequentworking together of the two suggests that their basic positions were in agreement.

2. Miyazaki in the Introduction of his Study of the History of Asia, Vol. I, explained that he didnot publish papers during the war as an act of de®ance against the government and themilitary: `Since the war began, I thought Japan would be in a very dif®cult situation if itis defeated, thus I was willing to do anything to boost the combative power of Japan.However, my papers were not written for this purpose. I knew very well that publishingthese papers would not in any way help boost the ®ghting spirit and the combative power.’(Miyazaki 1975:2±3)

3. Territorial boundary has scarcely any meaning in Miyazaki’s historical studies. He might belimited by the horizon of the knowledge system that formed him and could not directlyconduct cross-cultural historical studies. But even in his studies of Chinese history, hisconcern was always with the con¯icts among ethnic groups and the consequence of those

con¯icts. This characteristic was re¯ected not only in his study of the modern history of China. In his study of the history of Asia, the same perspective was also consistentlypresent. In An Outline of the History of Asia, the ®rst chapter is entitled `The establishmentof the various cultures of Asia and their development’, the second `The negotiations amongthe various Asian peoples’, and the third `Communications between the various Asiancultures and their development’. These titles show clearly the characteristics of his thinking.Although the data used in these chapters are too crude, they show the characteristic of hiscross-cultural study. He has, for example, brought together in his discussion the peculiari-ties of local conditions and the mythic legends of the founding of states, summing up themythic legends into variations spun from three main types of state-founding legends fromthe Chinese civilization, the Indian civilization, and the Persian civilization, respectively.

He has also conducted studies on the role played by nomadic peoples in the transmissionof culture, and pointed out that the nomadic peoples have acted as the media forcommunications between different cultures, while they themselves are characterized by therelatively weak accumulation of culture. What is particularly remarkable is that Miyazakiknowingly positions various civilizations from the point of view of world history. Particu-larly with regard to the Islamic civilization, which has signi®cantly in¯uenced the civiliza-

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tion of Europe, he highly appraises it for its signi®cance to world history, thinking that thecivilization of the Arabic Empire has inherited the legacies of the ancient civilizations of Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and Greece, paving the ground for the development of modern world history.

4. Here, Miyazaki (1940) revises the traditional distinction between the East and the West intothe differentiation among `three worlds’: West Asia, East Asia, and Europe. He proposes

the mode of historical differentiation of `three worlds and three periods’. He then concludesthat, in these three worlds, ancient history was characterized by unity from above in theempire and the medieval period was characterized by the tendency of decentralization withthe devolution of powers to local or regional administration, whereas the Renaissancecharacterized the modern period. In West Asia, the occurrence of the `Renaissance’ after thereligious reformation heralded the arrival of the modern age; the `Renaissance’ here consistsof the revival of the Persian civilization of the Abbassid, as well as the Greek civilization.As for East Asia, the modern period began with the revival of Confucianism during theNorthern Song Dynasty in China, about two centuries later than East Asia’s Renaissance.Miyazaki focuses his discussion on the in¯uence of `Renaissance’ on one another among thethree worlds.

He holds that the signi®cant in¯uence of the `Renaissance’ that began in West Asia orEast Asia was in painting, and the Song painting that developed later in turn in¯uenced theIslamic world, and proceeded further to provide inspiration for the Italian Renaissance.He devotes much space to demonstrating the role painting played in the linking of thethree worlds in the development of the modern spirit. He even appends to his paperas many as nine photos of paintings. However, one cannot but admit that the relation between the relevance of painting to the processes of Renaissanc e in the three worlds on theone hand, and the positioning of painting in their respective traditions on the other hand,are far more complicated than the wishful depiction Miyazaki offers. Furthermore, theother arguments with regard to transformation in philosophy, science, literary style, andother areas fail to go further than super®cial description. However, in Miyazaki’s dis-

cussion of the Renaissance in the three worlds, there is a basic line of thinking that deservesour attention: spatially, he stresses the horizontal relations of the Renaissance, whiletemporally he denies the possibility of contemporaneity for the three worlds. That is,Miyazaki has noticed the existence of the inherent thread of cultural development in eachregion, even though he is forced to entrap himself within the evolutionary discourse of linear historical progress by his emphasis on consistency in the mode of history of Asia andEurope.

5. The original Japanese means Àsia as the starting point of re¯ection’. The intention is to break through the con®nement to Asia in established thinking. Here it is rendered as ÀsianPerspectives’, for a literal translation would violate the habit of titling in Chinese.

6. In 1989, Tokyo University Press published Mizoguchi Yuzo’s (1989) China as Method. By

way of discussing the studies of history, the book raises straightforwardly the challengingquestion of how Asia and modern China in Asia become world principles, providing a newway of thinking with regard to the question of relativizing modern values of the West. Infact, this book is an elaboration of The Turning and Development of Chinese Pre-modernThinking (Mizoguchi 1980). As the former is written in an easier manner than the experttreatment in the latter, and the questions are raised more directly, it has aroused quite a stirin Japanese academia. This interest prompted the Tokyo University Press to entertain theidea of probing further into the questions raised by the book. Thus, the preparation for Asian Perspectives was launched.

7. In `The Modern Age of China and the Modern Age of Japan’, Takeuchi Yoshimi offers anextremely interesting de®nition of history. `Rather than regarding it as a point in history,

a limiting condition with no possibility of extension, the moment is the site for theproduction of history (not a pointless point).’ (Takeuchi 1993: 21) Needless to say, the abovepassage is amazingly consistent with Walter Benjamin’s `Theses on the Philosophy of History’. More importantly, the way of grasping history revealed by Takeuchi in fact bringsout in relief the à-historicality’ of today’s historians in their inability to grasp the moment.Mizoguchi has most brilliantly shown his ability to take up history in just this way in his

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representative work The Transformation and Development of Chinese Pre-modern Thinking. Inthe explanation Mizoguchi offers of Li Zhuo Wu’s naming of `the natural state of beinghuman beyond the reach of any established given premises’, he developed his grasp of thetransformational period between the disintegrating phase of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the formation of the Qing Dynasty. This was not the consequence of conceptual deduction and given premises, but rather was made possible by his remarkably

perceptive sensitivity to the inherent tensions in history.8. For details, see Hamashita Takeshi’s (1997) Tributary Systems and Modern Asia. This

specialized study is a collection of his papers on tribute systems, his `Tribute andtreaties’ originally published in Modernity in World History, is also included in this volume.In this book, Hamashita Takeshi establishes his basic perspective with regard to thetrans-border tribute system of East Asia, directly constituting a challenge to the modernsense of nation-state. He queries in the Preface in a quite abstract way the question of the historical possibility of Àsianism’ and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere:`Geopolitics as a discipline starts from the state as the premise of its consideration andits ®eld of vision is completely con®ned within the area of the state. Hence, the object of study of geopolitics and the object the state seeks to gain control are historically different,

and this is a point that has instead been neglected.’ (Hamashita 1997: 13) Obviously,Hamashita hopes to re-de®ne geopolitics: Ìn this book, the concept of geopolitics is usedin the fundamental and broad sense. It refers to the totality of politics taking place on the basis of geographica l conditions. Thus it is different from the geopolitics of the earlytwentieth century, whose analytic frame re¯ects the perspective of the concern for central-ization of the sovereign state. But in order also to probe into the historical positioning of discussions that occurred in the history of East Asia with regard to Àsianism’, `GreaterAsianism’, and the `Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, I believe we must alsorespond to the demands raised by geopolitics. That is to say, we must re-examine thepolitical analysis together with its methodology of the geopolitics proposedthen.’(Hamashita 1997: 13)

In the chapter `The East Asian international system’, he points out that the propositionof severing from Asia is a similar gesture to that of the claim of the Choson Dynasty of Korea to be the legitimate inheritor of Zhong Hua. It seems to be displaying its nationalcharacteristic in front of the Chinese Empire on the one hand, and also suggesting that boththe periphery and the centre share the conception of `the extension of the ruling power of the centre across the land within its reach’. In the third part, `Japan and Asia in the modernEast Asian international system’, he continues to argue that the ideas of disassociating Asiaand of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were reactions against the underlyingframe of mind formed in the `Hua-Yi’ order. In this order, China was the centre of thetributary system. But the reaction does not aim to destroy this order, rather to occupy thecentre of this order. Thus, `westernization’ of Japan is not the end, but rather Japan’s means

to rejoin Asia.9. Kawakatsu Heita’s idea of à system of self-isolated states’ was forwarded to complement

Wallerstein’s idea of the `world system’. He argues that it is not correct for Wallerstein totake his `world system’ as the only system, built around the economy as the centre, in thehistory of mankind. It is only one form of modern economic society. In contrast to this, inthe same historical period, a system of self-isolated states of the three East Asian countrieswas formed between 1600±1850. China, Japan, and Korea developed one after the other intoself-contained economic systems, and assumed attitudes that rejected free trade. That thesecountries also banned or maintained trade with foreign countries, as well as closing toforeign in¯uence, were part and parcel of the tribute system. Kawakatsu stresses that, fromafter the seventeenth century until the founding of the states by the East Asian countries,

a worldview and international order completely different from that of Western Europe wasformed in this region.

10. See Asahi Shimbun, 9 August 1999, for coverage of the Ìnternational Conference on MarineStudies’. Kawakatsu suggested the conference to set up a united body between Japan(Nippon), Indonesia, and Australia and named it `Nichidoneraria’. He further stressed building loose social networks so as to avoid being dominated by power politics.

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340 Sun Ge

References

Hamashita, Takeshi (1986) `Tribute and migrants’ . In UmesawaTadao and Matubara Masaki (eds) · Civilization Studies on RulingInstitutions . Chuokoronsha .

Hamashita, Takeshi (1997) `Tribute and treaties’ , Tributary Systems and Modern

Asia , Iwanami Shoten : 141±227.Kawakatsu, Heita (1994) `The establishment and development of the East Asianeconomic sphere’ , Asian Perspectives Vol. 6Vol.6 : 13±65.

Kawakatsu, Heita (1996) Japanese Civilization and the Modern West ,NHK Publishing .

Kishimoto, Mio (1995) `The various perspectives that take Asia as the startingpoint ± `crossing’ and `dialogueº Ð Ð , . , . , Historiography Studies 676: 36±47.

Kojima, Tsuyoshi (1993) `The intellectual history proceeding from regionalconsideration’ , Asian Perspectives Vol. 1

Vol.1: 33±51.Miyajima, Hiroshi (1994) `The formation of small peasant society’, Asian Perspectives Vol. 6 Vol. 6: 67±96.

Miyazaki, Ichisada (1940) `Renaissance in the East and Renaissance in the West’, Asian History Studies No. 2

No.2: 336±87.Miyazaki, Ichisada (1975) Study of the History of Asia , Vol. II., Dohosha

.Miyazaki, Ichisada (1987) An Outline of the History of Asia , Chuokoronsha

.Mizoguchi, Yuzo (1994a) `The founding of the theory of the principle and Qi in

China’ , Asian Perspectives Vol. 7 Vol. 7:77±130.Mizoguchi, Yuzo (1994b) `The formation of Asian societies and states’

, Asian Perspectives Vol. 4 Vol. 4: 1±11.Mizoguchi, Yuzo (1989) `China as method’ , Asian Perspectives Vol. 4

Vol. 4: 1±11.Mizoguchi, Yuzo (1980) The Turning and Development of Chinese Pre-modern Thinking

Tokyo University Press .Suzuki, Naritaka (1990) The Modernity of World History ,

Sobunsha .Takeuchi, Yoshimi (1993) `The modern age of China and the modern age of Japan’

, Japan and Asia Chikuma Shobo Publishing, 11±57.

Terada Hiroaki (1994) `The nature of `agreement’ in the legal order of the Mingand Qing Dynasties’ , Asian Perspectives Vol. 4

Vol.4: 69±130.

Appendix. Names and special terms

Names

Fukuzawa Yukichi Kojima Tsuyoshi’sHamashita Takeshi Kuwabara Jitsuzo

Li Zhuo Wu’sHiraishi NaoakiKaraki Junzo Maruyama Masao

Miyajima HiroshiKawakatsu HeitaMiyazaki IchisadaKishimoto Mio

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Takeyama MichioMizoguchi YuzoTerada Hiroaki’sNaito KonanUeda MakotoOkakura Tenshin

Otsuka Hisao Umesawa TadaoWatsuji Tetsuro’sSuzuki Naritaka

Takeuchi Yoshimi

Special terms

Breaking ties with Europe and integrating with AsiaClosing Japan to the outside worldDisassociating AsiaDisassociating Asia and integrating with EuropeGreater East Asia Co-prosperity SphereHua-Yi metamorphosisKyoto School of thoughtReviving Asia

Theory of local conditions and customs

Author’s biography

SUN Ge was born in 1955 and received her BA degree in Chinese Literature at JilinUniversity in China. She is currently an associate researcher in the Institute of Literature at

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She has written several works in Chinese including Seeking Alternative Frame of Reference (Qiu Cuo Ji ) (Sanlian Bookstore ), `Position of Literature’ (in Intellectual Inquiry 3, 4 ) ¼ etc.

Translators’ biographies

HUI Shiu-lun is ®nishing his dissertation in Comparative Literature at Hong KongUniversity. LAU Kin-chi teaches in the Cultural Studies Program at Lingnan Univer-sity in Hong Kong.

Editor’s noteAn earlier Mandarin Chinese version of this paper has appeared in Taiwan: A Radical Quarterlyin Social Studies (1999) 33: 1±65. We wish to thank Yue-Tsen CHUNG

(PhD in History at the University of Chicago, currently a post-doctorate fellow atHarvard University) for her detailed editorial work, and HASHIMOTO Kyoko(graduate student at National Tsing Hua University Taiwan) for her ®nal touches

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How Does Asia Mean？(Part II)

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